A Pair of Second Chances (Ben Jensen Series Book 1) (35 page)

So, as he cleaned out the last of any possible evidence, he made sure that there was no physical connection between anything he disposed of, and anything that remained.

He picked up a pillowcase with fresh clothes he'd dropped on the porch earlier, and walked to the car. His gear bag was still in the trunk, and to be honest, since it had been in the car too, and he'd handled it, after both fights, he just didn't trust it any more. It would go with the car.

The one risk he'd have to take was his boots. He didn't have another pair and couldn't risk going in to town to buy any. He thought though, that he had a way to deal with that small risk.

With everything in the car, he drove out and turned to follow the road from Choteau, deeper into the mountains. A few miles uphill he turned off on a narrower branch that he followed for another couple miles before cutting off of it, onto a one lane, rarely used, track. Several times he had to stop and push larger deadfall far enough out of the way to allow the car to pass. The smaller obstacles, he just drove over.

He'd gone in on that narrow track for nearly a half mile when he broke out into a small clearing, of maybe an acre. It sat tight against the shoulder of the mountain. Where the slope met the bulldozed clearing, was a large, now boarded up opening.

Ben pulled the car up in front of the wooden bulkhead and switched off the ignition. From the trunk he pulled a crowbar he'd tossed in, in preparation that morning, and went to work removing the heavy planks spiked across the dark shaft.

They were thick planks and solidly spiked. The work took him most of an hour to pry enough boards loose to allow the car to pass.

When he was a boy, he and some friends on a camping trip had found this shaft and explored it. One of them had nearly fell into it, when in the darkness, a hundred feet in, they discovered it dropped off straight down for they didn't know how far. All they knew was, when you tossed in a large rock, it fell for a damn long time before you heard anything.

With the shaft cleared Ben dropped the pillow case on the ground, along with a hammer he took out of the car, picked up a large rock, which he tossed onto the passenger seat, and climbed in. He started the car, slowly rolling through the narrow opening. Ben slowly, idled the car into the tunnel, the sides just wide enough to allow the car to pass. The headlights illuminated the narrow tunnel up ahead, showing that yawning hole inching nearer, until he stopped, twenty feet short of the hole.

This was the tricky part. He couldn't just push the damn car in. It would high center and not fall in, leaving it on top to be found, and him, totally screwed.

He left the engine running, and put the shifter into neutral. Awkwardly he climbed into the back seat then leaned forward, pulled the release and pushed the drivers seat forward as far as it would go.

Still leaning forward, into the front seat he lowered the rock onto the accelerator, until the engine was running at half speed.

The narrow tunnel left him little room to crawl out the side, so Ben climbed out the now missing rear window.

He walked back to the opening and outside. Looking around he found a long piece of rusty pipe in a scrap pile remaining on the site and walked back to the car with it.

Squeezing in between the Saturn, and the tunnel wall, he could feel the vibrations of the racing engine through the car his legs were pressed against. He was careful to stay behind the rear wheels, and looked carefully at the damaged rear body, making sure there was nothing that would snag him, and take him for a ride he didn't want.

Having assured himself it was safe, he poked the pipe through the side window of the car. Using the seat as his fulcrum he wedged the pipe against it and the gear shift. With a hard shove on the pipe, he slammed the shifter into drive.

The tires spun, kicking up dust in the tight space, and the car disappeared, its belly scraping as its momentum took it over the lip into the black hole.

Ben dropped to his knees and crawled quickly to the edge to see the strange sight of the tail lights, surrounded by a halo of light from the headlights, as the car plummeted into the dark hole. The car threw off sparks and the sound of scraping metal came back up to him as the Saturn bounced off the sides of the shaft on its way down, but only for a couple of seconds.

A thundering crash and a fireball racing up at him, attested to a ruptured fuel tank and sent Ben scurrying for the mine opening.

Wasting no time, Ben grabbed up the hammer and went to replacing the planks over the opening, as smoke started pouring out of the hole.

"Damn!" he cursed. "I'm a dumb bastard! Yeah she'll likely burn when she hits bottom, and destroy anything left... But fire makes smoke! You God Damn stupid son-of-a-bitch!" He laughed like a fool as he wildly pounded spikes into the beams surrounding the opening.

The smoke was already tailing off when he nailed the last spike. He picked up the pillow case, and the hammer and trotted off across the clearing in front of the old mine, into the trees beyond.

"With any luck, no body noticed that lil' pillar of smoke... and by the time they come looking, it'll have quit" he thought. "You dumb son of a bitch!" He turned, grinning, and trotted away though the trees.

A mile along he came to small, stony, opening along a small creek. Stripping down as he had the previous morning, he piled the clothes up, pillow case and all, after he'd dumped out his fresh clothes, all except for his boots anyway, and lit up another fire!

And again, he stepped into the creek with his nail brush and bar of soap, and repeated the scrubbing he'd done the previous day. This time, he included the boots in the scrubbing. They'd been exposed to dried blood at the most, so he had no worries about blood stains, just whatever dust they might have picked up in the car.

Thoroughly sterilized to his satisfaction, he tossed the soap into the water and the brush into the fire as he climbed naked out of the creek.

In a minute, he was dry, the towel he dried with going into the fire as well, followed by more sticks and pine cones. He kept that fire burning as he dressed, until nothing remained but grey ashes.

Having done the best he could, he pulled the last thing that had been in the pillow case; a ball cap emblazoned with the Logo for King Ropes, onto his head and set off down the mountain, bound for the Lodge and Amanda.

As he walked he looked back. It had been a bit over two hours since he shoved the car into the hole. Not a wisp of smoke to be seen. Ben scanned the sky all around, not a sign of a helicopter, or any circling airplanes either... He breathed a hesitant, but welcome, sigh of relief.

"That was close dumb ass." he told himself as he walked. "You've used up 'bout twice the allotted breaks for drunks and fools. You'd best start payin' attention!"

Long about three that afternoon, a tired Ben Jensen, limping still, walked into the yard at the lodge.

Amanda and Timmy were sitting on the porch when he turned into the drive from the road. She stood and stepped off the porch as he approached.

"Hey stranger" she said, shielding her eyes from the afternoon sun with her hand. "We don't get very many good looking gentleman callers of an afternoon." Amanda said, doing an exaggerated imitation of a southern accent. "Not out this far!" as she continued her teasing.

"Yeah? Well, who said I was a gentleman?" he teased back, grabbing her as he walked up, and making a big show of planting a kiss on her lips.

"Why sir!" Amanda squealed. "What kind of a woman do you take me for?"

"Uh... Not one of them damn dried up prissy Ol' prudes in town I hope'!" Ben laughed as he hit her with another kiss, to the giggling delight of Timmy as he jumped off the porch.

"Well sir! There are children present! You must behave yourself" Amanda scolded, slapping his hands away and continuing her heavily accented southern mimicry.

Ben reached down and picked up the boy, to his continued delight, and together, they walked into the house.

Chapter
36

"How'd it go?" she asked as they walked into the kitchen. "And, what now?"

"A glass of water... uh ... make that a beer!" Ben told her as he sat down at the table, "And then, I'll tell you."

"Back less than a day, leave again in the morning without hardly a good bye, walk back in the door hours later, God only knows where you've been and you're already throwin' orders around! You've got your nerve mister!" She laughed.

She called to her son, across the room; "Timmy, why don't you run outside, throw your ball for a while like you do. Let Momma and Ben talk for a bit, Ok?"

"Ok, Momma." Timmy ran over to the couch to get his ball lying on the floor in front of it, and ran outside through the door they'd left open in the warm, early fall weather. She looked back at Ben as the sound of the ball, rapping against the logs, started up.

"Ok cowboy, now spill."

Ben told her all of what he'd done. Where he'd gone and why. Then he outlined the story that he'd concocted on his long walk back. The story that he intended to spin, for the State Police, when he went down to Helena in the morning.

"At least, that's where I assume they're gonna want me to go." he said as he finished his soliloquy; "and actually, I figure I should call 'em pretty quick. Let 'em know I just got into phone range, and had got notified by family, that I'm a wanted man!"

As he finished his tale he looked around and saw the phone and battery lying in the same spot he'd tossed it, nearly three days ago. He got up, walked over to the counter, picked up the cell and battery and returned to his seat at the table.

Ben took a deep breath and pushed the battery into the phone, snapped the back in place and said to Amanda, with a weak smile, as he pressed the power button; "Think I missed any calls?"

To say he was juuust a bit apprehensive as the phone powered up would have been being a little modest. He wouldn't have admitted it to anyone, but his stomach was in his throat as the phone started dinging with notifications. He held the phone low in his lap so Amanda couldn't see his hands shaking.

He took a deep breath as he pushed the button to retrieve his voice mail, and pressed the phone to his ear to conceal the shaking.

"Yeah. Missed just a few it looks like." He grinned, weakly again, at Amanda.

After running through all the messages he clicked end and told Amanda; "So, that makes six from Karen, each one a lil' bit angrier and a lil' bit louder than the last, wondering where in God's name, I am." Ben grinned, "and the other four, from a Lt. Sheinaker with the Montana State Police. He don't sound real happy with me either!"

He'd hoped he knew his daughter well enough, and he learned he did. She'd already replaced the phone that he hoped was gone with the Jamaicans, and, was burning up the cell towers with messages demanding he call her immediately! Truth be known, he couldn't see her walking to the corner without a damn cell phone! She must have made Kevin stop at the Verizon store on their way home from Avon!

Ben also thought that if he was correct in his judgment of the men that had done the ambush, and they were in deed the sort he had them pegged to be, they'd leave nothing to make identification of anything, easier for any one.

For he and Karen, that would mean her old phone would not be found lying around to complicate matters.

Those men would not leave, to even the faintest whisper of a chance, the unintended consequence, that something left behind however seemingly unrelated to them, would somehow be the start of a trail to them.

Ben smiled to himself. He'd been right about Karen. He was sure that those men were one more time that he'd calculated things right. Of that he was certain.

The first thing he did was dial Karen's number. She answered on the second ring. "Dad? Where are you? Why haven't you called before now? I've been trying to get you all day? Damn it Daddy! What the hell is going on?"

"Well, first off Darlin' I missed you too!" Ben laughed. "And second, many thanks for all the messages. Glad to know how much you care!"

"Talk to me Daddy! What's happening?"

"Uh... Daughter, I thought I was! Look. I just came off the mountain and turned my phone on when I got back into range. It's all filled up with your hollerin' at me about some shootings or some damn thing, down in Ennis or Helena? You were caterwaulin' so bad I couldn't really make sense of what you were sayin'! Something about they've got my face all over the news! Then there's a few from some cop with the State Police that wants to talk to me, he seemed kinda riled up too! I expect that's about whatever nonsense you're seein' on the news... I haven't a clue lil' bit... I been... uh ... chasin' cows with... uh ... a friend of mine... so, I'll call you as soon as I talk to the police, and get this all straightened out. I'll call you later. Bye!" Ben clicked the end button before Karen had the time to reply."

He hoped she had the good sense to realize what he was doing. He thought she did, but then, you never could be completely sure what a woman was thinking.

The thing that had not really occurred to him was that the news casts plastering his face all over the TV; the news that Amanda had called him about, came after they'd kidnapped Karen. Her squallin' at him in her messages, would seem to back up the story he was formulating in his head.

His grin widened as he sat looking at Amanda. This was working out pretty fair!

"One more call to make girl... and then, I'm gonna take a shower and a long, long nap!"